Children of Killers LaTonia Antoinette, center, in Katori Hall’s play about the descendants and the survivors of the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s.Credit
Brian Harkin for The New York Times

The teenage boys bouncing around the stage with a soccer ball could be from almost any American town. Wearing shorts and T-shirts — one has a flashy purple Kobe Bryant jersey — they burn with the energy of youth and trade talk of Jay-Z and Beyoncé.

Then suddenly you’re brought up short by some of the words they sling back and forth in such cocky, jocular tones. The harmless trash talk has turned to boasting about how many victims their fathers slaughtered during the genocide that devastated Rwanda in 1994.

“They say my father killed 678,” one says in a voice ringing with pride.

“Well, they say my father killed 752,” another brags.

But the father of a third has become the most notorious, renowned for his brutality. When a man begged him to be shot with a bullet, the son said, he “was so cold he chopped him to bits with the machete anyway.”

This goosepimply moment is one of many disturbing, powerful passages in “Children of Killers,” a drama by Katori Hall having its American premiere at the Castillo Theater in a production directed by Emily Mendelsohn. Ms. Hall, the author of “The Mountaintop” (seen on Broadway last fall) and “Hurt Village,” based “Killers” on interviews she conducted at a genocide studies conference in Rwanda in 2009, working on commission from the National Theater in London.

The play is set in that same year in a Rwandan village that, like so many others, was torn apart by the violence that erupted when members of the Hutu ethnic group killed some 800,000 Tutsi and others in savage violence. As the title indicates, Ms. Hall’s play concerns the generation of kids who were too young to participate in the slaughter, though not always too young to be victims of it.

And it sorrowfully suggests that the legacies of that violence have shaped the children of the perpetrators — and survivors — in ways that we would be wise to pay close attention to. Although a national reconciliation process has been under way for several years, “Children of Killers” portrays contemporary Rwanda as a country still very much in the grip of ethnic enmity that has the potential to be reignited.

Photo

Suzanne Darrell, using a machete as a mirror to check her lipstick, and Naja Jack.Credit
Brian Harkin for The New York Times

In structure, Ms. Hall’s hourlong play is fragmentary and impressionistic, a collection of short scenes concentrating on a small group of friends who are, for the most part, excited at the news that their fathers are to be released from prison at any moment after serving some 15 years for the crimes they committed. (The play’s brevity and lack of a strong narrative arc probably explain why “Children of Killers” is having its United States premiere at a comparatively small theater.)

The exception is Vincent (a brooding, charismatic Terrell Wheeler), at 18 the most mature of the group, whose father was that infamous beast known for his murderous prowess. Unlike his peers Bosco (Melech Meir) and Innocent (Sidiki Fofana), Vincent cannot view the return of a father he barely knew as a purely joyful event. He has tried to rid himself of the poison of hate that still lingers in his peers, particularly Bosco, who sees no harm in making ugly jokes about the Tutsi, whom he refers to as cockroaches.

Vincent, who lives with his mother (Suzanne Darrell) and younger half-sister (Naja Jack), has nightmares about the events of the past. As the day of their fathers’ liberation nears, the kids are haunted by the “guhahamuka,” or silenced victims, whose laughter and voices surround the audience, and whose shadows are eerily projected on fabricscreens that cloak the auditorium.

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Ms. Hall’s impressionistic approach feels right for the material; her subject is not so much the stories of this particular group of boys but the haunted atmosphere of the country itself, torn between the need to put the past behind it and move forward into a more stable future, and the equally strong imperative to remain attentive to the seeds of hatred that may still lie dormant in the soil.

Ms. Mendelsohn’s production, while rough-hewed and obviously produced on a small budget, gets the important things right: most of the performances are strong and individualized, the mood quietly unsettling. Small details can bring you up short: during a quiet scene at Vincent’s house, you suddenly notice the machetes carefully mounted on a shelf like family treasures. Vincent’s mother casually takes one down to use as a mirror, curious to see how she looks with the lipstick she has put on to welcome her long-absent husband.

Another moving passage comes in a long, slightly stagy monologue from Esperance (LaTonia Antoinette), a Tutsi survivor, who lost an arm in the violence. Keening over the grave of her mother, she asks, “Who knew one would rather die at the stroke of the machete than of the slow tick-tock of the AIDS clock?”

Ms. Hall’s writing is uneven, moving somewhat haphazardly through several registers. The earthy byplay among the boys rings true, but there are also more stylized passages — like that monologue from Esperance — in which she strains for lyricism, or allows the characters to debate the moral questions a little baldly. Vincent: “Do you really think the government put a machete in your father’s hand?”

But the tough subject is mostly handled with a simplicity and specificity that impress. Ms. Hall clearly has empathy for the victims of the genocide and the children of those who perpetrated it, who must try to reconcile natural affection for parents and tribe with a truth so gruesome it is almost impossible to accept. You leave “Children of Killers” with the unhappy sense that while the bloodletting has long since ended, the genocide will be reaping victims in Rwanda for years to come.